The Cleanup
by Sean Doolittle
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sean DoolittleEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-31
ISBN: 0440242827
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Dell
Book Reviews of The Cleanup
Book Review: Like telling your friends you were in a high speed chase with a gun-toting biker gang...
Summary: 4 Stars
...when it was really just a fender bender with a VW Beetle in 5-mile-an-hour traffic.
THE CLEANUP hit a lot of Top Ten lists this past year. And I mean A LOT. In every mystery mag I read, I saw Doolittle's name up for an award or a favorable ranking. With such overwhelming popularity, I decided Sean Doolittle was next on my personal reading list, and the book from his catalogue to be examined and enjoyed would be the much-touted CLEANUP. So I slapped $5.99 across the palm of my local bookseller and looked forward to THE CLEANUP wiping the floor with me.
The result? An inflated caper that should've been a short story.
Not that CLEANUP wasn't fun or engaging; on the contrary, Doolittle's prose is quick and clever and reminds noir fans of the classic pulp writers. The characters are sympathetic and well-drawn, the dialogue sharp, the action believable, and the caper itself is twisty and turny with a high dose of suspense. The ending is crash-bang, like a volcano that has built for centuries and has finally erupted, and the resolution is bitter as much as it's sweet. It truly is a modern-day noir mystery, as if Doolittle reached back in time to the `50's and pulled out a lost gem from the desk of Hammett.
That said, CLEANUP had 10-pounds of manure stuffed into a 5-pound bag. At 270 pages, it's already "short" for most novel-length stories, yet so many scenes are unnecessary or stretched beyond their usefulness that I got the impression Doolittle included them only because they were fun and they got him to a good novel length. Don't get me wrong: Every scene in the book is enjoyable reading because it's so well written. But relevant to the plot or story? Not so much.
It's too bad Doolittle didn't perform a little extra "clean up" on this book as it would have rocked as a short story or novella. In the end, however, rest assured that THE CLEANUP makes for a contemporary noir novel that's a breezy and fun read.
Summary of The Cleanup
Matthew Worth is a mess. Somewhere between a good cop and a bad screwup, he botched a marriage and a career. His fellow officers think he?s a joke. His commanders are tired of cutting him breaks. Even his wife has left him for a flashy homicide detective. Busted to night patrol at a robbery-prone Omaha supermarket, Worth is doing time, wearing his uniform and asking shoppers if they want paper or plastic. If that isn?t enough, he suspects he might be falling for Gwen, the shy checkout girl who may be an even bigger mess than he is. It couldn?t get any worse. Until it does.When Gwen comes to him one night scared and desperate for help, Worth discovers just how far he?s willing to go to protect and serve. The next thing he knows, he?s driving a stolen car with a corpse in the trunk, a pistol in the glove box, and no way to turn back. Everything he doesn?t know could get them killed. And things haven?t even begun to get messy yet....
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